Top 8 Mistakes New YouTubers Make

I have worked with hundreds of YouTube creators, and I have seen a lot of them make a lot of common mistakes over and over again. And want to share with you guys what some of those mistakes are so you can make sure you avoid them on your channel so that your channel can grow as easily as possible and reach the goals that you have for it.

Brian and Jacey have been working on a channel called Lifetree Family, and they make videos every Tuesday and Thursday about how to grow together as a family.

It’s been a lot of fun to be a part of that with these guys. Here’s our interview on the Top 8 Mistakes New YouTuber’s Make.

Tim: “What are some of the common mistakes that we’ve worked through but you guys have also seen is one that could be really easy for new creators to make?”

1. Not Knowing Where to Take Your Audience

One that we have to constantly remind ourselves is where do we want to take our audience? We want to put them on a journey of bringing their family closer together. We want to make sure that we’re giving them steps to do that through a call to action, a practical tip. But it’s easy for us to kind of forget about that. I mean like, why did we make that video again?

2. Lacking Goals for Videos

I think, yeah, as creators, we like the creation process and so we make the video, and then we kind of forget what’s the goal of the video. What is it supposed to accomplish for the channel, for the viewer, for me as a creator? A lot of those things.

3. Not Knowing How to Promote Your Videos

We’ve really had to focus on how we’re going to promote our videos. So at first we kind of had this idea like, ‘we’re just going to make all of these videos and put them up on YouTube’. But we really needed to focus on our promotional strategy. So ‘how are we going to get more subscribers? How are we going to enhance our search so that more people are finding our videos?’

A lot of new creators think, ‘my videos are so awesome they’ll just perform based on nothing else than the merit of the content, right?’. They make the mistake of thinking ‘Everybody’s going to watch. Everybody will watch my videos.’

And sometimes that happens, but it’s nothing you want to bank on. It’s better if you go into it with an actual strategy of a goal on a plan of this is how we’re going to grow, and this is how the videos are making play into that strategy.

4 . Forgetting Who You’re Trying to Reach, and How to Reach Them.

A big one also that I’ve seen is that a lot of creators go into their channel forgetting two really important things– one, who is the channel for, that’s the target audience. And also what is the value proposition of the channel? What value does this content propose to deliver to that target audience over and over and over again?

Because a lot of creators are like, ‘oh, I like Pewdiepie, I’m just going to make gaming videos’, or ‘I like Shay Carl, I’m going to do family vlogging’. And they go into it just understanding what the content is, but without knowing who should care and why they should care.

Creating the content just because you like makeup beauty tutorials without knowing who it’s for and why they care will really stifle the growth of your channel. So you really want to integrate those two things very intentionally and to all of your content.

5. Lacking a Clear Value Proposition.

Life Tree: “Tim, you’ve really challenged us as we’ve been developing our channel on that value prop, because a lot of times, we’re reaching a very similar audience to what a lot of other channels might be reaching. It’s like, what makes us different? Why should people listen to our channel and subscribe to our channel?

The Value Proposition is really about the why. Maybe our story, and how that’s woven in. I think that ties into where we want to take our audience as well– that journey. Because it’s a journey that we’re on and we want to bring them with is that it comes down to our story and the why.”

Tim: “Yeah. And I think those are two things that have helped to make your channel stand out is a combination of storytelling, helping people identify with you. It’s not just like here, you guys are parents so let’s give you three reasons why you are not awesome.

It’s more like your three reasons why I’m a terrible parent.”

Life Tree: “Exactly, and then people identify with that, and so there’s an emotional connection. And then after the connection happens, then you can say, here’s three things that I’ve learned that helped me become a better parent. And they are much more likely to receive that at that point. So combining the story with the advice, and there’s more stuff we’re going to throw in later as their channel continues to grow. But that’s where we’re at.”

6. Forgetting to Focus on the “Hook”

Another common mistake that I could see it being really easy to make as a brand new YouTube creator is not focusing on the hook. So that includes your title, your thumbnail, and the first 15 seconds of your video. Those things are crucial to get people engaged in your content. And the title needs to be really searchable and the thumbnail has to be clickable– something really engaging, fun looking, bright and also something that looks the same across your entire channel.

7. Not Providing Enticing Branding.

It doesn’t matter how awesome the content is if people aren’t enticed to click on the thumbnail and the title doesn’t pitch the value. And even if those two do a successful job getting people to click, if the first 15 seconds of the video doesn’t actually connect with the value that they’re hoping to get or they’re expecting to get by clicking. Without that connection, there’s a disconnect between any three of those things, people abandon the video, you don’t get the watch time you want, you don’t get persistent watch time, and your video overall performs poorly in search and related and all over on YouTube.

8. Lack of Flexibility to Try New Things.

Life Tree: “I know one of the things that we’ve had to be really flexible with is just being willing to learn and adapt and change things when we see when we see that oh, that didn’t work. OK, let’s not do that, let’s try this. And just try things along the way. We’re still trying to figure a lot of that stuff out.

And that evaluation period is another big mistake that I think creators will make. They’ll just make the same thing over and over and over and over again. I have friends who are doing literally the same thing for five years on YouTube, and they’re wondering why it’s not working. Try something else. Obviously, don’t just keep repeating the same mistakes over again.”

Tim: “That evaluation is so important. Analytics can help, input from friends can help. Not people going, ‘oh yeah, I like it’. But honest, good, helpful feedback. Even here at Video Creators, I’m experimenting with different formats, trying to reinvent myself and the content, and how we’re delivering the value to the target audience that I’m trying to reach. So that’s really important.”

These guys at Lifetree Family have a channel. It’s a great example if you want to see some ideas of how to avoid some of these mistakes even as a brand new YouTube channel, and how to work through some issues as well.

We’d love to hear from you guys in the comments below. I know you have made mistakes and you’ve seen a lot of other people making mistakes also. So what have you seen? What have you learned?